


a scene from the bunker in the middle of the night

by birdsofthesoul



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Season/Series 14, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-14 17:06:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18480598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdsofthesoul/pseuds/birdsofthesoul
Summary: Late night conversations and two bowls of noodles.





	a scene from the bunker in the middle of the night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [madebyme_x](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madebyme_x/gifts).



The thing about housing twenty odd hunters is that they go through food faster than John Winchester went through bullets. Dean's mostly given up hope on eating the stuff he buys on supply runs, but the weeks of disappointment still haven't prepared him for the utter bleakness that greets him when he peers inside the fridge.

Dean, for lack of a better word, boggles at the single head of lettuce left on the shelf.

The bacon's gone. So's the bread, and the leftover Chinese, and all of the groceries he bought on his way back from his last hunt. Even the OJ is gone — there's just enough left to qualify as backwash, and whoever took the last swig still fit for human consumption was kind enough to leave the carton on the counter.

He's hungry enough to debate the merits of eating the lettuce raw when he hears the soft fall of footsteps behind.

"Dean?" Sam says cautiously.

He turns around to see his brother hovering uncertainly in the doorway, looking like he just dragged himself out of bed.

"Did I wake you?" Dean asks, contrite. They're both functional insomniacs, but they're still trying to pretend that their circadian rhythms are only mildly fucked up.

Sam's clearly given up on that hopeless endeavor — he doesn't even bother faking a yawn. He just squints at the lettuce. It's a pitiful, wilting thing, definitely not up to snuff when it's measured against Sam's standards (crisp! fresh! the perfect shade of pale green!), and Dean can _feel_ it shrivel a little more from the judgment in Sam's frown.

"Were you planning to eat that?" Sam asks incredulously.

"I don't know." Dean looks down sadly at the only edible thing left in the bunker. "Probably not."

Sam shakes his head, laughing, and Dean chucks the lettuce back into the fridge. "I wanna go out for waffles," he says petulantly, because this sudden food crisis is really Sam's fault. The least he can do is spring for a decent breakfast.

Sam breaks off mid-laugh. "Right now?"

"Right now," Dean agrees. "I'm starving and I want something good."

Sam sobers immediately.

"It's two in the morning," he says gently. "If you go out for waffles, you're never going to go back to sleep."

Dean's stomach growls. He looks at Sam pleadingly.

Sam is mostly immune. "I have instant noodles in my room," he says grudgingly, like cheap ramen is an adequate substitute for fluffy deliciousness. "Just. Just try and go get some sleep. I'll come call you when they're ready."

Dean acquiesces and wanders back down the hallway. He catches a glimpse of the other hunters roaming around and does his best to tamp down a surge of displeasure. They're good people, he reminds himself yet again, but then he catches a wisp of a conversation — something about Michael, he gathers, because it cuts off as soon as the other hunters see him, and he loses his appetite.

By the time Sam enters his room, precariously balancing two large bowls of noodles on a tray, he's starting to wish that he never left the kitchen.

"Ramen cooked inside a pot," Sam says triumphantly. "I heard it tastes better this way."

Dean pokes listlessly at his bowl.

"Try it," Sam urges. "I think I can safely say this is one of my top three dishes."

It's the third dish Dean's ever seen him cook, but Dean takes a bite and decides that it probably tops his eggs.

He takes a few more bites, because there's no point in wasting good food, especially when Sam's gone to all this trouble, but Sam is pretty perceptive when he's on high alert.

"What's wrong?" Sam asks.

"Nothing." Dean lays down his chopsticks on the tray. "I'm just tired."

"Liar," Sam says, pretty good-naturedly as far as these accusations usually go. "Did you have a bad dream?"

Probably, but Dean doesn't really remember his dreams now. It's the one perk of growing older. "No idea," he says truthfully.

"Did someone say something to you then?"

Sam's watching him closely. Dean thinks about recounting the overheard conversation — thinks about asking Sam to move his hunters somewhere else in Lebanon. It's the middle of nowhere and rent is cheap. He waits a beat too long, because he feels Sam's shoulders tense.

"It's Jerry and his friends, isn't it?" Sam says darkly. "Did they do anything?"

Dean weighs his words judiciously. "I have no idea who Jerry is," he says at last. That's true. He doesn't know any of the other hunters by name, except for Maggie. Maggie's a good kid, he thinks, and is probably why he shouldn't ask Sam to toss the whole lot of them out. "Everything's fine," he adds somewhat belatedly, "nobody did anything."

Sam is silent for a while, and then he takes the bowl from Dean's hands and puts it on the tray. "Get some sleep," he says quietly, and gets up from the bed so that Dean can slide under the covers.

Dean closes his eyes, and then opens them again when he realizes that Sam's made no motion to leave. Sam's a dark silhouette framed in the doorway, immovable and impenetrable, and Dean's suddenly struck by how much he looks like their dad in that instant.

"Go to bed, Sammy," he sighs. "No one's going to come into my room and harass me. You don't need to stand guard."

"I'm not standing guard," Sam says stubbornly. "I'm just thinking."

"About what?" Dean says waspishly.

"Things. Just go to sleep, okay, I need to think in peace."

Dean rolls his eyes and yanks his covers over his head. It's ridiculous, he thinks furiously, how much he likes it when Sam's in the same room as him. His room smells like ramen, Sam's a hulking presence who's probably going to veto waffles again in the morning, and he's starting to feel hungry again. But still.

It's one of his better nights.

 


End file.
